AMERICANS WERE shocked and outraged last Monday by what transpired in a New York subway station.

They were shocked that a man was pushed in front of an oncoming train at midday.

They were outraged that instead of trying help the doomed man, some people whipped out their smartphones and took pictures.

And if that’s not bad enough, a New York tabloid went so far as to publish the horrifying photo of Ki-Suk Han, 58, trying to get off the tracks just before he was crushed to death.

“Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die,” screamed the headline.

So what happened after that? The article was quickly shared, linked and tweeted. It went all over the globe.

Such is the world we live in today. Everything seems fair game. All the time. With little if any filter.

But is this amazing technology, which provides instant communications, turning too many users into observers as opposed to participants?

Is pointing and shooting the knee-jerk response to a man who’s about to lose his life?

In this case, freelance photographer R. Umar Abbasi has said he was too far away to reach the man in time to save him. He said he was not strong enough to have pulled him onto the platform if he’d been closer.

So he ran toward the train, he said, firing his flash to get the motorman’s attention. He said he happened to catch the horrific image, which the tabloid used, only by chance.

Maybe. But that doesn’t excuse others who were standing around, saw what happened and didn’t do anything — or later, participated in a photo frenzy.

“The sad part is, there were people who were close to the victim, who watched and didn’t do anything,” Abbasi wrote in a follow-up story in the New York Post. “You can see it in the pictures.”

It’s possible that people were simply frozen in horror. They couldn’t move. News reports quoted some witnesses as fearing for their own safety. But others admitted they were documenting the scene after the crash with their smartphones.

“A crowd came over with camera phones and they were pushing and shoving, trying to look at the man and taking videos,” Abbasi wrote. “I was screaming at them to get back, so the doctor could have room because they were closing in on her.”

Traumatized motorman Terrence Legree told the New York Daily News he was disgusted. “People were taking pictures of the poor gentleman,” he said. “They didn’t want to leave.”

Five years ago, Wesley Autrey became famous for saving a man who had fallen onto the subway tracks. Phones weren’t as “smart” back then.

Today, anyone with a smartphone can be a freelance photographer, and that’s fine. But they shouldn’t surrender their humanity in the process and become leeches or voyeurs.